California Indian Museum and Cultural Center

The California Indian Museum’s ACORN program trains Native youth ages 11 to 18 to plan, lead, and enhance a traditional food business as it engages them in revitalizing traditional food systems in their region. Youth learn about nutritional aspects of California Indian traditional foods, and become immersed in the very active food ways as they steward and gather acorn and other traditional ingredients to make Acorn Energy Bites with guidance from Tribal elders.

By centering Native youth as traditional food ways leaders, the California Indian Museum seeks to instill in them a better understanding of nutrition and the necessity for securing it and the ability to innovate solutions. ACORN strengthens the connections between Native youth and traditional ecological knowledge of their ancestral territories, positioning them to become experts and leaders in environmental stewardship and climate change mitigation through restoring the relationship between Indigenous peoples and their homelands and combating erasure and settler colonialism through increasing access and control of cultural resources.